I make up the design of maps by winging it, tweaking things as I go along. Of course I make a really loose plan but yeah. This obviously introduces some problems. One of such seems to be a rather common one; the sniper's advantage in an open map.

As of now, a sniper who is basically like 80% of the (current) map away can snipe away at the BLU spawn, which you can see in the picture.

The solution is easy; put a big block there. However I'm out of ideas on how to make it;

a) make sense
b) look good
c) make it easy to implement without excessive modification

Any ideas?

EDIT: Oh and as a side question, how do you get rid of those stupid cart track shadows?

A sniping view of the spawn isn't necessarily a bad thing (look at official maps), just make sure no one can snipe the spawn points themselves, and there's at least one other exit (preferably covered).

well you can't snipe the actual spawn room without being really close and obvious (the spawn room layout resembles goldrush), so i did well there. The problem is more in that the area is gigantic and snipers have huge advantages except vs other snipers and possibly soldiers.

I made the changes. But i started experimenting with area portals. After fixing all the leaks (pointfile just points to the top skybox brush from one of the area portals) and changing all the portals between Open/Closed none of them work properly. If I put them on Open/Closed they always appear to be closed whenever I look into the sealed room (nothing in the room renders; likewise when I go inside, and most of everything outside ceases to render).

This is an ideal time for photobucket to go down, and I don't really want to host anywhere else, so it's the description for now